Big Tech dominance is the talk of the town. But how do hardware markets affect these monopolies? In the first episode of ALTRnative Perspectives, we take a deeper look at the materials that make up emerging technologies, and how the markets for those materials work.

With Suthirth Vaidya, co-founder and CEO of Predible, a healthcare AI startup, we tackle the history of semiconductors, contemporary semiconductor markets, and new mergers that will affect the development of AI for a long time.

With Anish Radhakrishnan, a journalist with People’s Dispatch, we talk about the recent coup in Bolivia, and how Elon Musk’s ambitions with lithium may have paved the way for this imperialist aggression. This conversation will take you through an underexplored dimension of new technology’s global dominance.

ALTRnative Perspectives is a podcast by the Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. This first episode has been developed by Jai Vipra.